At a time when the National Park Service's maintenance backlog is more than $11 billion in the red, the Senate should not agree to add units to the park system, units that already are being preserved/NPS photo of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor
There are at least 75 million reasons why the U.S. Senate should either fully fund the national park projects contained within the defense authorization bill, or strip them out.
For the National Park Service, already billions of dollars in the red with its maintenance and operations budget, and cutting staff in crucial areas such as cultural resources, to be asked to add seven new national park units, adjust the boundaries of nine units, and redesignate two of those units, without any new funding, is incredibly poor legislating by Congress and will not enhance, but rather degrade the overall system.
This is not to judge the worthiness of the prospective units as part of the National Park System, but rather to point out the fiscal absurdity in play. Congressional Budget Office figures show it would cost the Park Service at least $75 million over a five-year period to get these units up and running, and millions more to operate them on an annual basis. At the same time, the Park Service's maintenance backlog has crept up to $11.3 billion, and some of those needs are critical.
According to the Park Service, 90 percent of the roads in the system are considered to be in "fair" or "poor" condition; " 28 publicly accessible bridges within the parks' transportation system are "structurally deficient" and in need of rehabilitation or reconstruction;" "approximately 36 percent of all trails throughout the National Park Service (6,700 miles out of a total of 18,600) are in a "poor" or "seriously deficient" condition" and; "since 2005, the number of national parks in regional air quality non-attainment areas has more than doubled; 128 parks now are in non-attainment areas, where air pollution levels regularly exceed the national ambient air quality standards."
We like to view the national parks as "America's best idea," and members of Congress certainly like to point to a unit in their home districts. But if we can't afford the 401-unit park system we have today, how can we possibly justify new units?
There's no urgent need to add the sites listed in the defense bill at this time. The Blackstone River Valley has been part of the park system as a heritage corridor since 1986; Valles Caldera National Preserve currently is under the U.S. Forest Service; the Coltsville Historic District in Connecticut is under the aegis of the Hartford Preservation District; the proposed Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site is currently a museum; the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park actually exists today as a national monument President Obama designated in 2013; the Atomic Heritage Foundation currently is preserving sites that would fall into a Manhattan Project National Historical Park, and; public and private efforts currently are at work to protect the fossil-rich landscape of Tule Springs near Las Vegas.
Congress would be much wiser, and the National Park Service much better off, if it simply added $100 million to the agency's budget in effort to chip away at the maintenance backlog. While $100 million would barely dent that staggering sum, it'd be money better spent at this time than forcing the Park Service to decide where to further cut its existing budget to manage these additions.
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Comments
Kurt, just like last time it was only the GOP who wanted to shut it down and said so.
But we've had that out with the True Believers before and they keep tryint to rewrite fairly recent history.
100% of the Dems (212) voted against the rule necessary to bring it to the floor for a vote. They were joined by a handful of Reps.
But, you know what. I don't have a problem with them voting that way and I won't vilify them for it. Its exactly the same scenerio. Last time there were things the Republicans didn't want and so they wouldn't vote for it. This time there are things the Dems don't want.
The real difference here is that when the Republicans used the same tactic, people like Rick screamed bloody murder. Now that the roles are reversed, it is all honky-dorry. Hypocritcal much?
The reality is that neither party was fully responsible for the shutdown then and neither is fully to blame now.
The more I've read about this "bill" the more disgusting it becomes.
The entire thing should be tossed on the scrap pile.
The NPS portion of it is only one tiny aspect of a much larger and extremely porridge of gifts for special interests -- not one of which would be able to achieve passage as a stand-alone. It includes such things as stripping even more consumer protections away from superBanks, taxpayer funded protections for banks gambling with depositors' funds, many environmental safeguards that have long been in place, a near tripling of the amount wealthy individuals may contribute to campaign treasuries of Congressional and other political candidates. It's simply disgraceful and any good that might be included is more than cancelled by the political potty contents.
This is Congressional crookedness at its absolute worst.
As for more and more regulations being imposed by government agencies, it would be nice if we could somehow find out many of them are direct results of this kind of "legislation by amendment and rider" that our Congresscreeps use so frequently to bypass the proper methods of passing legitimate legislation.
But they've become so good a covering their tracks that it's almost impossible to do that. We voters need to find the courage and wisdom to flush the toilet that Congress has become and send ALL of the down the drain to be replaced with fresh water.
Who was it who said, "Policitians are like diapers. They need to be changed frequently. And for the same reason."
And we're back to the issue from the previous shutdown, which is objections by one side or the other to various provisions added onto what should be a straight-forward bill to fund government operations - nothing more.
Once again, this spending bill has become a catchall to (1) get congress out of town on vacation as quickly as possible; (2) try to push through measures that likely would not pass as a stand alone bill, and (3) let congress avoid one of its basic responsibilities, which is to pass funding bills, after due consideration of the merits of budget requests, for each of the federal agencies before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.
-- ecbuck, again you miss the point. A procedural vote like that is not a final vote. The point is to make the Republican majority choose, and if the Republicans know they cannot hide behind Democrats, then they have to commit. No one thinks they want to kill the bill, only that Republicans would know the bill would die if they also did not stand up. The Democrats find enough votes to just pass the bill, the bulk coming from Republicans, because right now it is essential for the Republicans to start to take responsibility for something real. People who follow Congress knows is what the procedural vote meant.
-- Lee Dalton (with Kurt's concurrence), God love you, as my grandmother used to say, but lets say you could flush away all these Members of Congress, and as long as American voters allow corporate money to control the game, you will get Congresswomen or men just as bad, more likely worse, than this lot.
d-2, thanks for adding what should have been the last paragraph of my post above.
But now what are we gonna do?
I'm thinking it's time to resurrect Occupy Wall Street, but doing a better job of it this time.
The challenge is getting people to turn off the anesthesia of endless entertainment and try to learn what's really happening to them.
d-2, if the "procedural" vote failed it would have been the final vote. The government would have shut down. If the dems were doing it just to play games that makes it worse.
I find part C of Sec. 3057 to be troubling for CHNS. These sections received much public comment and followed NEPA to the letter. If the final rule is modified recreational conflicts between ORV users and pedestrians will increase.
"SEC. 3057. CAPE HATTERAS NATIONAL SEASHORE RECREATIONAL AREA.